It’s in absolutely no-one’s interests that large numbers of people should find themselves without jobs; we’ve seen that happen before when industries on which communities depend have shut down or relocated, and the result is distressing.  For that reason alone I would be glad to support the Shaping the Future programme.

This programme however offers far more than simply remediation. It takes full account not only of the skills already available in such high-tech settings, but also of the potential for development of the green economy and for sustainability.

The decommissioning of plants as large as the Wylfa and Trawsynydd nuclear power sites has potential to leave their host communities isolated and unsupported, so the invitation to help ensure that does not happen is an opportunity I welcome warmly.

The accountable body for Shaping the Future is Menter Mon Cyf (a non-profit distributing body).  It is led by Project Director Judy Craske, who has devised an ambitious set of objectives to be met over the next two or three years.

These objectives include skills development and external investment in industries such as aerospace, renewable low carbon energy, environmental goods and services, biosciences and professional services.

Given my perennial fascination with knowledge ecology and the workings and impact of big science, plus both the conviction that attention to economies at the regional level is critical and a long-term commitment to sustainable development, how could I let this opportunity to be involved pass by?

I look forward to reporting progress as I learn more about this unique programme.

Contact details for Shaping the Future are available here.

As Katharine Round, Director of the Spirit Level documentary project observes, An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary film by Al Gore about global warming with a similar public awareness intent – to inform people directly about a very serious challenge to our futures – has had huge effect on public understanding and debate.  Perhaps the same can also be said of Inside Job, the award-winning documentary by Charles Ferguson, which explores relentlessly the facts behind the 2008 global financial meltdown.

But it’s still quite unusual to see a widely available documentary based on social demographic, epidemiological and other empirical data.  Wilkinson and Pickett have already triggered in their book  a fundamental critique of the factors which influence well-being and the way modern societies function (see also here). We can hope that The Spirit Level film will likewise have a big impact.

So this is the message received today (21 May 2012) about her project from Katharine Round, producer and director of The Spirit Level documentary film:

The Spirit Level Film campaign is now live!

Over the last few months we’ve been busily preparing to launch our awareness and fundraising campaign for a forthcoming documentary based on the award-winning book The Spirit Level.

And now the day has come – our campaign page is live at www.indiegogo.com/spiritlevelfilm

We need you to help

This campaign is going to be live for 6 weeks only from today, 21st May. The aim of this film is to build a campaign for greater equality, and it has the potential to make a big difference. Film has become one of the most effective ways of raising awareness, influencing public opinion and policy change: we want to do for the public understanding of the ways inequality damages us what An Inconvenient Truth did for the public understanding of climate change.

But in order to make this film happen we need you to support it now. Here’s how:

• Join Us – in spreading the      word. We want as many people as possible to be sharing      the campaign page today. If we can get hundreds of people sharing      through Facebook, Twitter, and social networks imagine what a message it      will send about public support for this issue. This will help us raise      awareness of our campaign aims, start putting pressure on politicians, and      help us attract the money to get the film made.

• Pre-Buy your copy of the      film now – one of the easiest ways to support us financially is to pre-buy      a digital download of the finished film in advance. Just 2,500 people need      to pay £12 for the film now, and we will have raised our budget! Of      course, if you want to donate more you can – and we have a whole range of      attractive perks on our campaign site (from signed copies of the book, to      tickets to the premiere!)

So, please help us to get the message out by sharing this email and our campaign site www.indiegogo.com/spiritlevelfilm

Why is this campaign so important?

This campaign aims to raise awareness of how inequality affects us and help to launch the documentary, so we can get the message out to millions more. The Spirit Level book showed how nearly all social ills – stress, poor educational performance, high crime rates, unwanted teenage pregnancies – are more common in those societies with a big gap between rich and poor. What’s more, in these unequal societies people die younger, they have more fragile economies, and they are a greater threat to the future of the planet.

Our aim with the film is to engage people who might not pick up a book and read about inequality to understand more about how it affects them, and what can be done about it. And our ambitions are high: we want to make a difference, change the political debate and government policy.

Films such as these are rarely funded by studios or broadcasters, who prefer to focus on more entertainment driven projects. However, this campaign wants to make a statement as much as it wants to raise money. We want as many people as possible to be part of it – as this will also show just how much public support there is for the issue and put pressure on politicians to move beyond lip-service to real policy change. We believe a better life is possible for all of us, and if we work together we can get the message out and make change happen.

Please do get in touch with us if you have any suggestions, would like any resources for your blog or website, or simply want to say hello! Our email is hello@thespiritleveldocumentary.com

Thank you for being involved

Katharine Round
Director, The Spirit Level Documentary

I was invited to be part of the event because in 2009 I conducted an evaluation of the Blackburn Young Pakistanis Achievement Commission (BYPAC), a mosque-led after-school programme which focuses on positive intervention and academic outcomes for young people in Blackburn’s Pakistani heritage community; and since then we have maintained contact.  It was good to learn that one of the discussants at today’s event (19 May 2012) is a graduate of that programme.

The Insight Out programme, instigated by Blackburn resident Waqar Hussain, has comprised over the past six months a series of fortnightly meetings by a committed group, where questions about the contemporary experience of Pakistani heritage Blackburn residents were explored.   Thus, as it comes to an end, we – some members of the insight-out group and some other invitees, assembled.  And the willingness of those present to address difficult issues clearly and constructively become quickly evident.

Following the event Waqar Hussain suggested we share here some impressions and thoughts about these discussions.  (Waqar’s narrative follows below).  Doubtless there will be further observations and ideas too – other participants are most welcome to add comment also - but there do seem to be some common themes, both general to areas such as the North-West of England, and specific to areas such as Blackburn’s Pakistani heritage community.

Mutual concerns and ambitions

Topics raised within the various structured conversations included

• the wider ‘vision’ (do we know, and how can we become involved in, what goes on in the wider world?)
• deep concern about the newly introduced higher levels of student fees (judged to be a big disincentive to post-school education)
• ways to enable job creation whilst also paying the legal minimum wage (?government subsidy of employment opportunities)
• the use of modest or micro-funding and loans to facilitate business development (what sort of funding, and when to loan or give it?)
• developing entrepreneurship when appropriate (who should be encouraged as an entrepreneur, and who simply needs a job?)
• recognition that many jobs will not be at degree level (apprenticeships and technical / craft skills are also required)
• issues of engagement and achievement in school-age education (parents and children)
• community respect and reputational issues (when the media projects the dreadful activities of a few onto the identity of a whole minority)
• recognition that some of Blackburn’s most disenfranchised young people in need of support are not in the Pakistani community (they are white working class boys)
• encouraging a better balance of public and private sector activity (more private, not less public; and what role for the social enterprise?)
• keeping highly qualified people in the local community (many who stay work in the public sector, but there are others too – just not very high profile)
• leadership and authority in our communities (who finds current leaders helpful, who wants to join in, and who has other ideas?)
• the democratic process (how to ensure the community’s voice/s are heard via that process)

… and much else.

So what did we learn?

There are themes here common to almost all northern, and many ‘excluded’ southern communities - the fear of a downward spiral of few jobs, low incomes, further diminution of the local economy; the balance of activity between the public and private sectors; achievement in education; haemorrhage of skilled people to other places, etc.

But there are other aspects which reflect more strongly the problems facing the Pakistani heritage community – for instance, the closed nature of that community and the low horizons which sometimes ensue; or the deeply unfair community reputational damage to all which has followed from the violent crimes of the few; or the assumptions about leadership and authority of ‘traditional’ communities.

These difficulties, both the general ones and the more specific, offer significant challenges if they are to be overcome.  Nonetheless, people at this event faced the issues squarely and honestly, with no hint of taking a ‘victim’ perspective; a position of strength has now been adopted which sets the tone positively and augurs well for the future.

What next?
The future of Blackburn is not mine to predict, but I did see some possible patterns and prospects emerging which we were able to consider.

My suggestions – all of them simply thoughts open to amendment or challenge – were these:

Positive, already
The issues around the economy and jobs or entrepreneurship are now clear. Agreement is total that further investment and skills retention / development is required, and this is being shaped up by community leaders, business people and the council working together, as in other places.  It’s a big challenge, but not a new or unrecognised one.  The key will be teamwork and visible well-publicised successes.

Similarly, the work of BYPAC and other organisations in ensuring that young people are positioned for educational success must continue.  The Mosque has played a vital part in this and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future; and hopefully these schemes will over time reach out even further to include more girls, and children from beyond the Pakistani community too.

This example of already in-action work on raising horizons and youth inclusion, coming from the senior leadership of the local community, is highly significant and perhaps deserves greater public recognition.  It is an antidote to unfair ‘outside’ stereotypes and it offers real positive example within the community itself.

The challenge of sustainability
But there are also some other things to think about, as everyone seemed to agree.  Will there be more working groups, now insight-out has come to an end?  And will these include a wider representation, from women, young people, specific professional and business interests, etc? For how long is the Mosque able to offer core support?  At what juncture will activities become embedded in the wider community (and should this be seen as desirable)? Who will set the agenda/s, and how?

Will the Council and other civic authorities be directly involved, either through existing channels, or in new ways? What will be the balance of debate and on-the-ground action? How will others’ hearts be engaged, along with already energised and able minds? And how will all of this be operationalised, resourced and led?

This last question is often the most crucial.  It is apposite to almost all developing communities, but it’s also specific in the ways it should be applied.  Those within a community almost always need to work through for themselves who must be included and how, who must lead, or from where resources and support can be secured.

Moving to action
The risk which many community-led initiatives face is that, after the initial bursts of enthusiasm and engagement, energies become dissipated.  The focus on ensuring consensus or inclusion can at this point become an obstacle, albeit unintended, to progress.

At some point the emphasis has to change, so that, understandings having been established, strategic direction, leadership and support become the way forward.

This is when communities have to decide: talking shop, or hard-won real progress? Fudge, or genuine trust in chosen leaders? Token action, or confidence to demonstrate up-front that palpable improvements are actually taking place?

The ‘fuel of self-belief’
The event in Blackburn demonstrates very positively that communities do have the resource to go forward, when enough people in them are prepared to make a difference.  Nonetheless, sometimes even the most committed activists may feel they can’t achieve enough for effective change to happen.

This concern is probably misplaced.  There is evidence that what works is not necessarily the size of the intervention, but rather its application over time.  As in business and economics more generally, communities function better, and individuals in them thrive, when they are helped to believe that’s actually possible.

By co-incidence, the issue of micro-finance was discussed not only at our Saturday meeting but also in a report that week by The Economist.   In it we learn that even very small positive interventions in extreme developing world situations can produce effects which are larger and of longer duration than expected. This The Economist identifies as a sense of the possible, the ‘fuel of self-belief’.

Hope
What these small interventions permit is hope – the (H) in our notes above.

If micro-finance can fuel self-belief in genuinely desperate circumstances, modest investments of time, vision and support will surely also deliver that in the communities of Britain’s northern towns and cities.  The challenge is to find people to ensure these resources are directed in ways which seed even more success.

By that measure, the future of the Blackburn Pakistani community looks bright.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Waqar Hussain writes:

The Insight Out project attempts to develop a new way in which marginalized communities can improve their well being. In this pilot, a group of professional Pakistanis try to make sense of their experiences with a view to making a positive contribution within their own ‘Pakistani’ community and the community of Blackburn in general.

The methodology looks to create a framework for discussions and is particularly useful when emotions are strong but solution vague. How does a marginalized community currently relate internally and externally and how in the future? What is the basis of relatedness? How does the concept of identity or belonging configure in this equation and how does that inform entitlement?

These are powerful and complex questions. The discussions can be uncomfortable and making one’s position clear carries personal risk and also risk to group solidarity. Deeply held assumptions are revealed and may require debate and personal adjustment after being challenged. This can be emotionally difficult.

To create the right environment for honest discussions requires sensitivity. It requires the group to feel comfortable. In part the structure of the meetings, familiarity with the space, the timings and the format allows deeper discussions but the role of the facilitator is crucial – requiring one to be mindful of people’s expressed and unexpressed anxieties. The ability to make sense of the emotions as well as the words and to have them made available for consumption moves the group along ever forward in richer dialogue.

It requires considerable expertise of the part of the facilitator to hold a group’s fragmented thoughts whilst allowing it to come to terms with difficult ideas about themselves and others.

The approach borrows from a systems-psychodynamic methodology. As a methodology it is well grounded.  It is rigorous, well researched and has been applied for decades in the NHS.

The methodology does not impose a solution – it allowsthatt to emerge and empowers those that have the greatest passion to act. It also gives the group an understanding of organizational issues i.e. accurately defining the ‘objective’, an understanding of authority, leadership and representation increasing the chances for success. The session on Saturday was a very basic introduction to the experiential way of learning.

This methodology has been applied in organisations but its application to community development is untried. If successful, it provides a method of dealing with the range of problems facing the borough including cohesion, education and employment.

As the very least it allows people to share their thoughts in a safe environment and understand the how issues of poverty, poor health and education all inter relate.

It seem counter intuitive to be ‘discussing’,  when action is needed, but this methodology actually protects scarce resources (volunteers’ time and expertise).

Action decided upon in moments of anxiety only really serves to eradicate the anxiety and thus can miss the problem all together. Volunteers are often disillusioned after putting considerable effort to deal with an ‘issue’ to see what little impact they have really had. Volunteers in this case are giving their time in a graduated way and being made aware of the holistic picture. If they then want to take action – there is a context in which the action can take place.

Have you been involved in this process? Your observations and ideas will be warmly welcomed via the Comments box below.

The big question which the Liverpool Economic Forum 2012 sought to address was:  How can Liverpool get into the fast stream?

Discussion was collegial and constructive, but the message, whilst certainly more focused and forward looking than hitherto, remains somewhat mixed.

Public and private sectors
It is probably fruitless to identify a ‘problem’ in the absolute number of people employed by the public sector in Liverpool – that sector includes a significant proportion of the high-skills jobs in the city, and is not especially larger than in other locations – but a focus on how to improve the ratio of public-to-private sector employment is useful. Without a significant mass of public sector occupations Liverpool would have greater unemployment and fewer decent services; but with a larger private sector as balance, the city’s economic health would be improved.

One-stop shop for investors?
That said, there are still too many city bodies all trying to make the case to prospective investors, and there’s a way to go before an easily identified one-stop shop is established - in part because of the historical plethora of such organisations, and in part because of the introduction of the new central government imposed LEP (local enterprise partnership) and the challenges that has brought. Where is the focus? And is the offer at city or sub-regional level?

One interesting general observation was that the private sector ‘runs faster’ than the public sector, and the latter must ‘catch up’. Whether this is always actually the case, or in every instance a required improvement, was not explored. Perhaps it needs to be; as should also be the claim that competition ‘is not regional, it’s global’… What, always?  And is there never a case for collaboration?

Worries for right now
More immediately, concerns remain about the failure to secure one of the new green investment banks for Liverpool, and about problems (after lack of funding success in the first tranche of awards) around the quality of the city’s broadband provision.  Likewise, business rates on unoccupied premises are seen as a damaging and critical issue from the vantage point of investors.

How, commentators asked, should Liverpool respond to the ‘hard place’ in which it’s said it finds itself, between the Golden Triangle to the south, and apparently perceived investment honey pots of Wales, Scotland and… Daresbury? How must it relate to the neighbouring, and we should note overlapping, economy of Manchester?  – though some of us it might be said would like to see these last two as friends rather than foes.

How can Liverpool best benefit from continued investment in bio-sciences? (Questions about the desirability, or effective management, of cluster-dependency were not explored.)

And how, without delay, can Liverpool connect its city centre to Edge Lane and Pall Mall developments – the Hope Street Quarter wasn’t mentioned - and secure effective connection between the partners on each side of the River Mersey to the massive ambitions of Wirral Waters?    How, also as a matter of urgency, can the infrastructure of Liverpool be developed as befits a cruise liner-fit port city, to serve inward and onward travel?

Ambition
The ambition, then, is without doubt.  In just an hour the Business Insider panel identified a critical range of opportunities and challenges in the immediate and medium term for the economic development of the City of Liverpool.  The intent to face and meet the challenge of ‘getting Liverpool into the fast stream’ is evident.

And yet…  and yet….   Is that it then? Is that all?

Quite rightly, Liverpool’s civic and business leaders want to position their city to serve its people well; and of course they must talk the talk of both the community and the wider entrepreneurial communities.  Growth, jobs and opportunities are the vocabulary which city leaders must employ.

Vision?
Nonetheless, those baby elephants under the Town Hall table are perhaps becoming restless.  How long before they fill the room?

At the Liverpool Economic Forum 2013 it would be good to see evidence of a new consensus that

• no public forum, however earnest and collaborative, should comprise simply white men in their middle years;
• there are things no city can achieve without full infrastructural support and enablement from central government: Liverpool will know by next year whether the current national administration is prepared to provide required facilitation;
• the odd reference to low carbon and green banks helps, but it’s nowhere near enough; and ’growth’ alone will not resolve tomorrow’s problems.

Alongside a proper acknowledgement of resource depletion and climate change there’s also a pressing need for change at every level in the climate of the political and economic debate itself.

Fundamental shifts
Ambition to move into the fast stream is admirable, but only if that stream is flowing in the right direction.

Here is the real, enduring conundrum for Liverpool’s city leaders, civic and business.

Can the city adapt constructively and positively to the shifts in fundamental realities which it is about to encounter?  Can Liverpool’s leaders bring about essential improvements in the lives of those who have so far missed out, whilst also taking everyone together to a position of strength from which to face the very different, very C21st challenges to come?

If those at the helm got ahead of the game in these terms, Liverpool really would be placed to face the future with confidence.

Chakrabortty is not overtly antagonistic to sociology and related disciplines, but he suggests they are not facing up professionally to the grim realities of the new austerity under a hegemony where monetarists hold massive sway and the word ‘Keynesian‘ is at best an irrelevance, and more often seen simply evidence of unreal, woolly-minded thinking.  Interestingly, he suggests we are more likely to find a Keynesian economist in a business school than in a faculty of economics.

Democratising the economic debate
The concern Chakrabortty shares in his article is that ‘discussion of the economic crisis needs to be made democratic, and …. academics have a role to play in that.’  He claims (and I, probably like all other social scientists, agree with him) that discussions of public policy are enriched when academics get ‘stuck in and provide interesting analysis’ – a point which by co-incidence resonates with a quote in a Renewal post, on the same daay as Chakrabortty’s, from the Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang:

“…the very notion that there is this neatly separable domain of economics, that it has its own logic and shouldn’t be tampered with by political or moral considerations – that notion in itself is at the heart of this free market ideology … Efficiency cannot be defined without reference to some shared sense of justice and fairness”– Ha-Joon Chang

This surely is the point at which sociology and related disciplines come into their own?  When this wider context is considered, there is much evidence of the social scientific analysis of the current economic orthodoxy: the work of researchers such as Danny Dorling, Tim Lang, Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson alone illustrates the point well.  Here, informed by the tools of social science, we see consistent, sharply insightful deconstruction of critical aspects of human experience as they relate to demography, food / resources, health, well-being and much else. All these matters surely connect very directly with current economics?

But forensic analysis and disclosure of how policy (or lack of it) impacts on people in all their diversity is not alone enough – not even when these insights combine to suggest what we may expect in terms of likely outcomes.

Social science research
Perhaps this is Aditya Chakrabortty’s point.  Whilst he has not in his critique much explored the work we mention here, his major criticism is that there are few overt examples of research by social scientists into how those who have brought about the current economic ‘crisis’ gained the traction to bring this about.  It is not enough alone to look at policy and politics, and then describe the facts and identify trends in impact.  We also need to know how and why these things came about.

Some of this has of course been documented. As one example, the film Inside Job by Charles Ferguson, which was an Academy nominee for the Best Documentary in 2010, offers a dramatically persuasive account of the global market meltdown in 2008.  It’s relentless pursuit of the position of some Chicago monetarists alone makes it stand out as analysis of the sort we should see much more of.

Challenge need not be disinterested
But, as Chakrabortty would doubtless remind us, disinterested, peer-reviewed academic research, Inside Job is not.    In my review of it I actually wrote:

Go, see the film. And take courage from it to challenge, by the facts, the still virulent world of alpha males and ‘their’ banks.

But few seem to have taken up this challenge.  And, sadly, beyond the realms of documentarists, the impact of what is actually known has been minimal.

Nonetheless, whilst we may agree Aditya Chakrabortty has a point about the relative ’invisibility’ of academic studies of the causes of the current economic crisis, there is also a case for suggesting that we should look more widely to discover what work has in fact been done.   Perhaps, as he (generously) supposes, the academic review process has stymied some studies which might otherwise have been undertaken; but on the other hand not all studies need to be conducted and presented from within the confines of the (alleged) detachment of the academy.

As Ha-Joon Chang observes, the study of economics should not be a cold and clinical operation – which perhaps explains why, to acknowledge Chakrabortty himself, business schools are more likely to sport the odd Keynesian, than are UK departments of economics in these straitened times.

Constructng a future
Keynes was a far from soft liberal in his fiscal views, but he insisted consistently that in difficult economic circumstances there is an imperative to provide constructive work and support for those in need – and that such a strategy also provides investment for the future which will improve everyone’s outlook and prospects.   Keynes may not have been ‘soft’, but he knew that properly constructed humane measures produce humane ends - a position in stark contrast to the monetarists, who somehow fail to observe that the fundamental building blocks of any economy are flesh and blood human beings.

And it is, unsurprisingly, at the ‘human’ end of the sociological prism that most work on the current situation has been carried out.  Studies of social policy and impact abound, albeit not all of them enshrined in the academy.

Disparate analyses
Think tanks and consultancies (my own, very modestly, included) have conducted research and enquiries into many aspects of the new austerity; we have considered everything from child care to regeneration, from ‘class’ to the distribution of wealth and opportunity, from equality to housing, from the challenges of  old age to those of the environment…   all of this undertaken, sometimes bringing to bear over-arching ideas such as the ecology of knowledge, and always using the tools and schema of sociology and the social sciences in general.

Nonetheless, the agenda for research into the current economic crisis should indeed include much more work of the sort Charles Ferguson undertook for his film, and Aditya Chakrabortty now seeks and proposes.

When findings from such enquiries become available they will add enormous richness to the work already underway into policies and impacts.  These policies do not appear without human agency, nor do the impacts impinge, except on human beings.

Indeed, this is the most fundamental criticism to be made of the monetarists, as once again Ha-Joon Chang has reminded us.  The market, and all that follows from it, comprises ultimately not ‘mechanisms’ but people and their beliefs and behaviours.

What sort of ‘democratic’ debate?
Even after the criticality of human agency and human impact have each been conceded by the ‘other’ side, however, one further question remains.

In what respect does Aditya Chakrabortty fear that the current economic situation lacks ‘democracy’?  He says:

I do think that our discussion of the economic crisis needs to be made democratic, and that academics have a role to play in that. Otherwise, we’re guaranteed that the people who steered us  into the mess will be the ones prescribing how we get out.

Perhaps I’ve misunderstood, but it looks to me as though this is a plea for the conjunction of social science as research, and politics (especially politics in opposition to the new austerity) as in the ‘real world’.

If that’s the case, I couldn’t agree more.  But I would also want to point to the role of the significant numbers of think tank analysts, politicians (and journalists) who already use the tools of social science in their every day endeavours.

Multi-disciplinary approach
Perhaps the universities and what Chakrabortty calls the ‘trade association’ of sociologists (the British Sociological Association, of which I am pleased to have been a member for many years) are not sufficiently enmeshed into the broader political spectrum; but there again, given the battering which sociology in the UK has suffered at the hands of right wing politicians (think of the FACTASS battles) that disengagement, whilst unfortunate, is unsurprising.

But when theory comes to hustings, no matter. You don’t need academe to work out why and how the current reign of the right has come about.  You just need research tools, rigour and curiosity.

The new agenda
Aditya Chakrabortty may or may not be correct about who so far has done, or not done, what; but he’s certainly spot on when he urges more focus on the mechanisms of imposition of the new austerity.  And it’s up to all parties concerned – academics, policy researchers, journalists, politicians and others – to get together in this work.

Letters from academics to the Prime Minister will have as little impact this time around, as Chakrabortty reminds us they had (not) last time.  But more revelations about how fiscal monetarists have somehow once again gained ascendency over the realities of every day human experience would, as he says, help enormously in understanding how the hegemony of dogmatic austerity can be deconstructed.

If you have a Twitter account and would like to draw more attention to this issue, please use the hashtag   #NoFGM  and follow  @NoFGM1.  Thank you.

It is extraordinary that in 21st century Britain female genital mutilation (‘cutting’), a barbaric, traumatic and sometimes lethal form of child abuse illegal in both practice and procurement, continues unabated.  An estimated 20-24,000 children are at risk of FGM annually in the UK – averaging some 50+ on any given day, or almost 400 every week - but as yet there have been no prosecutions.

Here is child neglect on a massive scale, a failure of professional care and child safe-keeping which absolutely must not continue.  This failure of child protection, whilst dozens of young children suffer grotesquely every day, is a deeply shameful national scandal.

Nonetheless, views on the most effective way forward will differ widely, and it is important that those who campaign on such difficult matters lay out their stall openly.

So, to open discussion, we consider below two of the most controversial aspects of FGM:  questions around female and male child circumcision, and complexities around ‘cultural’ issues:

Female and male genital mutilation
Inevitably, mention of female genital mutilation raises also the issue of male circumcision.   Both are with very few exceptions performed for non-medical reasons on children who cannot legally give consent, both are painful, and both are inherently a risk to future health.  For these reasons many would claim, whatever the rationale for cutting, that both male and female circumcision (mutilation) are contrary to human rights, and also de facto child abuse.

As a principled position, this claim is difficult to refute; and presumably it has some substance in law (but I am not a lawyer), regardless of the sex of the child.  Nonetheless, certain differences between male and female cutting may be pertinent to the situation in regard to the UK context. These may include:

Male circumcision (MGM: male genital mutilation) is normally a minor procedure carried out on new-born babies, under informed supervision and with well-established modes of after-care. It is a ‘hygiene’ ritual which has been part of some faiths for millennia and is not seen as subjugating those on whom it is performed.

Female cutting (FGM: female genital mutilation) is performed on girls whose ages range from very young to teens (average age ten years); it is usually a more severe – sometimes extremely severe – process undertaken clandestinely in the UK (where it is illegal) or as part of traditional ritual somewhere else which takes little if any account of pain reduction, hygiene or sheer human fear.  Its express purpose, however stated, is the subjugation of women in favour of men.

Whilst substantive morbidity and mortality data are hard to come by - more information would be very welcome if available - these considerations suggest that negative psychological and medical impacts (up to and including death) are significantly greater for girls than for boys, overall.  The female form of the procedure is, all things considered, more dangerous than the male form – and by its very nature also reaches out to the next generation when maternity complications(and even fistula) ensue.

For these reasons alone – even apart from the unequivocal illegality of FGM performed or in any way commissioned under UK law – female circumcision would seem to be a more immediate matter than male circumcision.  There can be no argument in the UK: it must cease, now.

Having said that, however, there remain important issues to resolve about male circumcision.  It does have medical dangers and tragically a small proportion of the baby boys who undergo circumcision do die or have long-term health problems because of it.  But UK legislators seem unwilling to confront these dangers.

At the very least parents permitting their baby boys to be circumcised should be required to sign a statement which overtly acknowledges the clearly listed risks of the procedure; and much better still would be deferment until the child reaches his majority and can choose to be circumcised (or not) for himself – thereby both removing the possibility that his parents might be deemed to have permitted an abuse, and also respecting his human rights.

Whatever the debates about MGM however, it is critical that the greater perils of FGM are not put aside. Both are very significant matters, but this is one area of contention where male ‘traditional’ considerations must not be permitted to eclipse female well-being.  The immediate priority is, unequivocally, to stop FGM.

UK focus, or international?
Most of us in the UK know too little about the cultures of other nations to offer anything of use (apart from financial support?) when it comes to tackling FGM ‘abroad’.  The United Nations, Amnesty and many other organisations have work to do here, and ill-informed alternative intervention without appropriate understanding could cause even more damage to victims and their families, not less.

The same does not however apply to what happens within the jurisdiction of UK law, which expressly forbids both the procedure of FGM, and arrangements to take children elsewhere for it to be done.

The statistics tell of a horrendous situation:   Some 22,000 children in Britain are thought to be at risk of FGM annually.  That’s more than 50 every day of the year, or 2+ every hour.

It is a child protection scandal of massive dimension that even now (May 2012) no-one in the UK has been sanctioned by the law for performing or allowing FGM in the UK, or on UK minors.

Given this, even humanitarian considerations apart, British citizens have an entitlement to a view.  The law is clear and is not, even remotely, being upheld.  The complicity between UK professionals and practitioners in permitting this situation to appertain is a major issue; and in any other field would have been exposed years ago.

There can be no ‘taboo’ aspects in law.  Professionals’ embarrassment or unwillingness to intervene ‘for cultural reasons’ are no excuse for turning a blind eye when child abuse and cruelty are the issues.

Of course those working on the ground, whether in the UK or elsewhere, will often avoid terms like ‘abuse’ or ‘mutilation’ (one project says ‘cutting’ is a ‘less judgemental’ term), and they will choose education as the way forward whenever possible. Establishing collaborative partnerships and trust in the communities where FGM is practised is critical to longer-term success.

Likewise, whilst child cruelty and abuse are always very serious matters, prosecution / guilt should not, where other sanctions are more appropriate, mean breaking up family units or destroying parental bonds. Sentencing policy and sensitivity are critical matters here; but so, definitively, is the scandalous professional neglect which every year results in more than 20,000 children being left at risk of unthinkable long-term damage.

FGM is an extremely unpleasant and distasteful business, but the discomfort of those who read about it is absolutely nothing compared to the pain and suffering, inflicted in defiance of the law, of defenceless young girls who are compelled by force to endure the real thing.

Campaigns in the UK against FGM can and will stop only when desperately vulnerable children are safe and the professionals whose task is to protect them have demonstrated that they are doing their job.

For further information, and for links to original data / material discussed in this post, please visit

FGM In Britain: Professional Culpability, Public Responsibility, Private Peril

FGM – Professional Neglect; Legitimate Moral Panic

FGM is a universal horror, not just in Britain

Women under threat world-wide (still); demand action now.

FGM (female circumcision) is illegal and cruel – and culturally challengeable everywhere

Footnote / disclosure: The author of this post (HB) has no business or commercial interest of any sort in connection with FGM.  She finds herself prompted to write about FGM simply because she recently discovered that, far from its incidence diminishing in the UK, the number of child victims is already vast, and probably rising.
Your thoughts about this difficult issue are welcome below, as Comment. Thank you.

If you have a Twitter account and would like to draw more attention to this issue, please use the hashtag   #NoFGM  and follow  @NoFGM1.  Thank you.

If you have a Twitter account and would like to draw more attention to this issue, please use the hashtag   #NoFGM  and follow  @NoFGM1.  Thank you.

How much more fuss must be made, to halt the life-long damage to children (in Britain and elsewhere) of genital ‘cutting’?  The news today that two men in Birmingham have been arrested in connection with alleged female genital mutilation (FGM) demonstrates how critical public awareness is to the effective safe-keeping of vulnerable young people.

These arrests follow a Sunday Times report last week that no prosecutions for FGM have ever been taken in the UK.  In fact, although it has been illegal in Britain for years to undertake the procedure in the UK, or to procure it elsewhere,  the number of babies and girls in or from Britain who are forced to undergo it is thought to be actually rising.

For some FGM, in Britain and elsewhere, has been a grim reality hovering around our consciousness for years or decades.  On occasion women who have experienced it at first hand have been brave enough to speak out in the hope of averting infliction of this terrible procedure on others; and there are also those of us who have tried, and largely failed, to keep the issue live simply because the reality of its infliction on anyone is so dreadful. when or wherever.

Action
But now at last, it seems, some action.

We cannot as yet know the reality of these cases, but the catalogue of ways in which this should be enhanced and carried through is vast, and has been explored by experienced professionals elsewhere.

There are however surely some actions which self-evidently must be included:

• establishing a clear epidemiology of risk via a full (anonymised) register of FGM child abuse – with sanctions for professionals who don’t register all risks fully, and a body which takes responsibility for the register;
• prevention of obvious ‘at risk’ by working actively and consistently with all mothers who present as FGM at delivery, to ensure it doesn’t happen to their own daughters;
• adequate numbers of im/e-migration officers at all appropriate (high-risk) times such as holidays to ensure that girls are not forced to undergo FGM e.g. in their ‘home’ countries;
• awareness-raising as an on-going and active programme in all schools (not just state ones, of course) to equip staff properly to protect children at risk;
• active training of police and other agency professionals, to ensure they understand the gravity of FGM as an offence, and recognise that this cannot be a no-go area, as some have claimed;
• collaboration very actively with ‘community’ leaders in areas where the risk is high, to ensure the illegality and gravity of FGM is full appreciated;
• … and others can of course (and are welcome to) amend or add to this list.

Inter-disciplinary programmes
The challenge here is that most of these programmes are cross/inter-disciplinary.  But so are those of decent elder-care.

There is already a scandal about the way practitioners and professionals have neglected the needs of older people.  An often legitimate moral panic has set in about neglect of elderly and vulnerable adults.  How long before it spreads to include the unforgivable neglect of over 20,000 children at risk of FGM in the UK, every year?

It can now only be a matter of time, unless good and very effective practice is established very soon, before the current cases about to go through the courts raise very serious questions about a similar neglect of the desperate vulnerability of small children undergoing illegal FGM.

A scandal unfolding?
FGM is an unimaginable horror; but if you – whether community leader, policy maker, nurse, teacher, or simply responsible citizen – don’t in all conscience want to think about it, you need to stop it.

The clock is ticking.  And in the meantime, every hour, of every day, another two or more babies and girls in the UK are learning the awful reality of FGM .

If you have a Twitter account and would like to draw more attention to this issue, please use the hashtag   #NoFGM   and follow  @NoFGM1.  Thank you.

If you have a Twitter account and would like to draw more attention to this issue, please use the hashtag   #NoFGM  and follow  @NoFGM1.  Thank you.

Female genital mutilation or FGM is not the ‘same’ as male circumcision.  Whilst that too is a painful and, to many, disturbing practice it is generally (at least in the UK) conducted under controlled conditions and is, though potentially also dangerous, usually a relatively minor procedure.

In contrast to male circumcision, girl children are frequently taken abroad expressly (and highly illegally) to be forced to undergo FGM in the location of their family of origin.  Female genital mutilation is an aggressively chauvinist practice, inflicted barbaricly by families on their daughters, and intended expressly to oppress women and subjugate them to the alleged interests of men.

Invasive and pervasive
Even the ’mild’ forms of female circumcision or ‘cutting’ are seriously invasive, often performed, without asepsis or anaesthetic, on babies, young children or girls reaching puberty.

FGM is extremely and often enduringly painful, offers no medical benefit and can be fatal or, especially in the more extensive forms of cutting, cause long-term morbidity, including obstructed labour and fistulae.

Yet in Britain it is estimated that every year well over 20,000 girls under the age of 15 are in peril of this procedure (see also A Statistical Study to Estimate the Prevalence of FGM in England and Wales).  It is thought that around 6,000 of these children live in London, and in the UK overall probably 50 to 60 children are at risk on any one day – more than two an hour, every day of the year.

Contrary to the police view in their Guidelines – but as suggested by Sunday Times evidence in April 2012 - Dr Constance Momah of Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals, who is editor of the guide to good practice concerning Female genital mutilation, insists that FGM procedures do occur in London, as well as during ‘Summer holiday’ trips abroad which families arrange for that purpose.

Dr Momah is firmly of the view that, whether the mutilation of girls is performed in the UK, or elsewhere, the perpetrators must be subject to full legal sanction.  But there have been no prosecutions either of those who may have conducted the procedure in the UK itself, or of those who take their children elsewhere (also expressly illegal) for it to be carried out.

Why are children in Britain still at risk?
The evidence of perpetration exists; guidelines for detecting who in the UK is likely to be subjected to FGM are easily available; and the penalties for permitting FGM to be inflicted on a minor are very severe.  So why no effective action?

FGM is a grievously serious form of child abuse and thereby gives rise to all the standard professional challenges associated with safe-guarding minors and reducing risk of injury and damage to vulnerable children.

Additionally however there are perceived to be ‘cultural’ sensitivities.  The fact that the large majority of victims are from families with connections in Africa, the Middle East or some parts of Asia has been presented as a ‘reason’ why a non-legal approach is required in dealing with this grave child abuse.

The evidence to date however suggests that this cultural sensitivity, whilst having some success in countries with a tradition of FGM, has offered scant protection for deeply vulnerable young people in the UK, more than 50 of whom are known to be at risk on a daily basis – and that number is thought to be actually rising.

No prosecutions
On the evidence available, there have been no prosecutions for FGM, in London or elsewhere in the UK.

The Metropolitan Police Project Azure exists, but still FGM continues. The Met reports that, whilst prosecutions have not been taken, the number of interventions had risen from 38 in 2008 to 59 in 2009 – out of more, we note, than 20,000 suspected cases p.a., some 6,000 of them probably based in London.

The refusal by the Metropolitan Police to prosecute for FGM, and its eagerness to ‘interpret’ legislation in favour of suspected miscreants, offers an extraordinary contrast with their noted diligence in calling down the full might of the judiciary for many other apparently more minor infringements of the law.

Passing the buck, massively
How this grave neglect of effective child safe-keeping has arisen in the UK is a matter which requires continuing analysis, but the factors claimed to be at play – ‘cultural’ ambivalence, reluctance to ‘interfere‘ with matters of such intimacy, political queasiness, the idea that this is a ‘women’s issue‘ and so forth – give no professional credence to, or exoneration of, their exponents.   Much more compelling are real-life stories such as that of the model Waris Dirie, in her film Desert Flower.

Here we see official inter-departmental buck-passing on a massive scale.  Despite new Government guidelines (2011) no single UK agency has ultimate responsibility for preventing FGM, and many professional practitioners doubtless feel exposed beyond their experience and training in addressing it.  Guidelines are no substitute for lack of substantive professional support and leadership on the ground.

Reticence or failure to intervene effectively is not acceptable in other instances of child abuse; nor should it be in the case of FGM.   Decisive action to protect victims and prosecute perpetrators is required forthwith – alongside, where appropriate, post-prosecution action directed at least as much at repairing damage as at punishment.  There must be a clear division in our minds between issues of guilt and those of suitable punishment, taking account of context and other need.

Is this a scandal like elders care?
So professionals continue to indulge their ‘cultural’ sensitivities; meanwhile every day another 50 babies and young girls undergo excruciating pain and mutilation.  Here is an issue which may match that of the recently disclosed failure by some practitioners to care for elderly people.

FGM is a scandal already happening in the domestic privacy of ’caring’ for defenceless children.

How many more small people must suffer so dreadfully, before neglectful professionals find themselves in the dock alongside the FGM perpetrators?

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~

If you have a Twitter account and would like to draw more attention to this issue, please use the hashtag   #NoFGM   and follow  @NoFGM1.  Thank you.

NB Further discussion of  ‘Call The Midwife’ as a really successful BBC1 drama series (and about who wrote and performed the music for the drama) can be found on Hilary’s other website, DreamingRealist ~ Call The Midwife: A BBC1 Triumph For Real People.  The blog on this website considers issues around delivering professional public service. 
You are most welcome to add Comment on either post.

The first reason why Jennifer Worth’s accounts of the grim realities of family life in London’s war-torn East End in the 1950s are critical to our present understanding of public service is that the UK National Health Service was one of the greatest achievements ever for the well-being of the mass of ‘ordinary’ people.  Let no-one imagine it wasn’t a big deal.  It was (and remains) a history-changing collective leap towards a fundamentally different mode of constructing public service.

The second reason is that the experiences of 1950s London which Jennifer Worth relates are still sometimes with us.

Mercifully there have been no wars on British soil since 1945 further to destroy the physical fabric of our communities.  But awful things do still happen to young families and babies, and the circumstances under which some British children grow up remain unforgivable, in one of the wealthiest nations on earth.

‘Need’ or ‘nice to have’?
Perhaps poverty and basic human survival needs are now often less acknowledged than they were in the immediate post-WWII years.  Jennifer Worth tells us that few knew about Poplar in the East End of London of the 1950s; but nonetheless almost everyone understood then that money was tight.  The most basic human requirements were not always available, regardless of one’s bank balance; food rationing – which at least in theory applied to everyone – didn’t go until 1955.  In that sense at a minimum we probably really were All In It Together.

There has been a shift towards conflating ‘need’ and ‘would like to have’.  Whilst we can debate the desirability or otherwise of this shift – materialistic, yes; but maybe also a vehicle for raising valid ambitions? – the clear downside is that most in mainstream society now genuinely don’t perceive the desperation of those who without enough simply to survive.

Basic essentials
That basic lack of the essentials for a decent life is at the core of what Jennifer Worth recounts.  And for some, hidden away from public view except when there is ‘trouble’, this is still their unremitting experience, every day.  There remain enclaves of abject material poverty and almost zero visibility, perhaps most often in the ‘donuts’ of inner cities or in isolated rural locations, where for the women especially empowerment in civil society is beyond comprehension.

Yet these same disenfranchised women turn willingly to the midwife when her services are required.  Anyone who has worked in early years or Sure Start will be aware of clients who without hesitation admit the local midwife but absolutely no-one else into their homes.  This most intimate of public services is accepted trustingly by almost every woman who requires it, regardless of chasms between client and provider of culture, language and whatever else.  And by very definition these clients are all prime carers of tiny British future citizens for whom we as a society have enduring responsibility.

Advocates for the invisible
Interviewing midwives in the course of my work, I have been struck by the clarity with which they see their role as mediators and advocates for the women in their care.  More than once I’ve been told by a midwife that ‘We’re the only people who speak for [some of] these women.’

By defining midwifery as women’s work of no wider relevance, conducted within a silently conspiratorial bubble away from the public eye, we take that same eye way off the ball.

Midwives report that in the absence of integrated support they find themselves delivering many other tasks as well as babies; they tell of being asked for help with housing, benefits, school problems and other issues which confront struggling families.  But it doesn’t have to be like that.

Seamless provision
There is currently a badly overstretched midwifery service with worrying implications for infant well-being, and a nation-wide shortage of midwives. Their core expertise, caring for expectant mothers and delivering and nurturing their infants, is enough to expect of our midwives.  Beyond that, the public service challenge is to find ways to secure seamless client progress from the privacy of maternity care to the wider remit of child and family care; and from there onwards towards responsible civic engagement.

Midwifery demonstrates that virtually everyone will accept public services if these are tailored to need.  It’s time to take heed of those midwives, and to blend their intuition and understandings about so-called ‘hard-to-reach’ clients (is it them; or is it us?) into the canon of generic public service.

Vantage point of the vulnerable
At the very least, Jennifer Worth’s work offers a chance for practitioners in every part of provision, from education and health providers to housing and town planning professionals, to consider afresh what the world looks like from the vantage point of the most vulnerable, whether in the 1950s or now.

What starts in the delivery room must move on through the home, school and community into the place of work.  Any public service which loses the trust of some clients before their children even reach nursery class is one which also fundamentally breaches the trust for long thereafter of its smallest future citizens.

A version of this piece on professional challenges first appeared in the New Start on-line magazine of 18 January 2012.

Further discussion of  ‘Call The Midwife’ as a successful BBC1 drama series can be found on Hilary’s other website, DreamingRealist ~ Call The Midwife: A BBC1 Triumph For Real People. 

[For those (not in the UK) unable to access the replays, the DVD of the series can be ordered from the BBC Shop here.]

What do ‘non-academic’ Sociologists do?
In preparation for my visit I conducted a bit of very informal research myself,  asking contacts in a variety of on-line groups for trained sociologists how they earned a living, as well as thinking about people I know in the non-academic world who have a Sociology degree, and what they now do. Some of the occupations and activities which came up are listed here, though these are by no means all we might have considered - a minute’s thought will bring many other activities also to mind; and further suggestions, from you the reader, of sociologically informed occupations are indeed welcome in the Comments section which follows this piece….

But that’s by no means the end of the story.  ’Sociology in your Career’ is sometimes rather different from ‘Your career in Sociology’…

Portfolio careers?
For the majority of the Sociology graduates these occupations are full-time jobs, but for others they are part-time, temporary, voluntary or only one aspect of a portfolio career.  Sociologists do not only study the changes in society, they often also experience them very sharply at first hand.

For some people with a degree in Sociology particular occupations and careers are perhaps even a vocation, whilst for others the professional situation which they currently occupy is simply a stepping stone or transition towards something different.

It all depends perhaps on what outcomes of one’s sociological training and experience one most values.  During our seminar session the final year undergraduates and I took an initial look at the skills and knowledge, professional and personal, which they were acquiring.  Our first attempt to bring some order to our insights looked like this:

Personal and professional skills and knowledge
Again, this is but a beginning.  Each student has his or her own interests and specialist subject preferences, each of them values some aspects of the sociological learning experience more or less than other aspects.  At least, however, this first attempt at joint, collaborative mapping of skills and knowledge helps us to see the scope for articulation of what sociological learning can offer; and there is much more still to be said, once any Sociology student takes a good look at her or his individual degree programme and elective additional studies.

The important thing, I suggested, is that in taking our career paths forward, we be very clear about the skills and knowledge which our study of Sociology has developed.

Potential employers (and potential investors and private clients, if one takes the more overtly entrepreneurial route) are unlikely to be particularly engaged by the names of modules which we have studied; but they will probably be very interested in what that study has added to our professional portfolio of know-how and competence.  Job applications and / or future business proposals are where we present what we actually have to offer, not ‘just’ what we’ve already done.

Moving forward
As I explained yesterday, I am not a career advisor.  I am straightforwardly a practitioner Sociologist who has also always maintained an involvement in academic Sociology, and it is from these perspectives that I speak and write.

My own ’career’ path has had many fascinating by-ways, as my personal experience criss-crosses my professional persona.  But I have without fail  found my sociological training invaluable, always leading me to ask questions, and giving me a conceptual and research toolkit to interrogate any situation with which I have been confronted.

For some few, a degree - or usually a number of degree/s –  in Sociology will stand alone as a way to make a living, perhaps as an academic or as a researcher in a large organisation or private corporation.  For others - probably the large majority - however, the skills and knowledge acquired will become instead an exceptionally useful foundation for further professional development in other ways.

Sociology offers an overview of society and human life beyond that of many other disciplines.  It provides the tools for analysis and insight into how organisations ‘work’ and even why change occurs.  And it gives right at the start of an individual’s career the opportunity to examine ideas and find out what it is in that vastly complex thing called ‘society’ which most fascinates that person.

A hint or three
Specific advice is best gained from tutors and career advisors who know a student’s particular interests, contexts, strengths and, perhaps, weaknesses. Nonetheless, offering a little general guidance here may be helpful to some.

Firstly, it a usually a good idea in the course of a degree in Sociology to ensure that one gains a good understanding of both qualitative and quantitative research and analysis. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches benefit a lot from augmentation by the other; and obviously both are invaluable if one is employed in any way e.g. to examine organisational processes, or to undertake research, understand statistical data, write reports, evaluate risk, or otherwise to bring rigour to the analysis of a given situation or scenario.

Secondly, it can do no harm to become confident about working online, using spreadsheets, writing a blog, developing presentations and the like. If you know how to do all these things, make sure you say so when you talk to potential employers and clients. Plus make sure, too, if it’s appropriate, that you are well-presented online as yourself – a good LinkedIn profile, membership of suitable online groups (perhaps including e.g. some free LinkedIn ones, or the British Sociological Association‘s ‘Sociology Outside Academia’ group?)  and so forth.

And thirdly, be imaginative.  Ask those questions.  Think of the things you (might) like to do, and match them against the huge variety of occupations you could pursue. (Look at the whiteboard list above, and ask how these occupations, or others which may be of interest, connect to your core sociological skills and knowledge portfolio.) Once you have done this, you may want to meet real practitioners in the roles which catch your eye, and perhaps even observe or shadow them if the opportunity arises – your active enquiries now will help you to choose what really engages you, and your enthusiasm and possible participation may serve you well later on, when further training and / or job applications are the order of the day.

In short
A degree in Sociology is a lift-off to a vast range of future occupations.  What comes next can be decided with due care, whilst that degree is still being completed.  To have a whole world of opportunities opening up, and at the same time be studying such a rewarding subject, is an exciting prospect.

Once you have a grasp of the Sociological Imagination, you won’t, as I know very well, want to let it go.