Halford
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 67853 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Halford |
| APELLIDO | Halford |
| FIRMA | HALFORD |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Southampton |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5102-1790 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 41 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 415 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 41 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1988 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 11 |
Explaining machine learning practice
The widespread use of machine learning (ML) models for decision-making raises critical concerns about transparency and accountability – to which an increasingly popular solution is ‘Explainable AI’ (XAI). Here, the object of explanation is technically complex models which are difficult or even impossible to explain. In contrast, this paper makes a call to de-centre models as the object of explanation and look towards the network of ‘machine learn…
Unblackboxing How Sociotemporalities Inform AI Accountability
In recent years, numerous accountability interventions have been introduced to address the harms and inequalities associated with Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. Early efforts concentrated on transparency and explainability, often operationalized as technical fixes intended to “open the black box” and render algorithmic processes more intelligible. However, sociological research has revealed the limitations of these interventions, particula…
Semantic Web Practices
In the past thirty years, the Web has developed from its inception as a layer of protocols on top of the Internet to use by more than 5 billion people and organizations. This has driven the creation of vast quantities of data and led to deep concerns about the politics of digital data and computational methods. To date, critical investigation of these concerns has focused on large commercial platforms built on top of the Web, and their use of mac…
Pesquisa em futuros sociodigitais
Susan Halford e Dale Southerton, pesquisadores e professores titulares da Universidade de Bristol, dividem a coordenação do Centro de Pesquisa em Futuros Sociodigitais (CenSoF), criado em 2022, com financiamento de 10 milhões de libras do Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Trata-se de uma iniciativa que reúne pesquisadores de diferentes áreas do conhecimento de doze universidades do Reino Unido, de outras cinco universidades internacion…
What Future for the Sociology of Futures? Visions, Concepts and Methods
Questions about the future, and futurelessness, have attracted wide-ranging attention in recent years. Our article explores what Sociology offers. We reflect on the apparent contradiction that the future was bracketed off from the discipline in its early history, yet also offers rich theoretical, methodological and empirical resources for futures research. We demonstrate this through an analysis of the contributions to this Special Issue, each of…
Organizing Health Inequalities? Employee-Driven Innovation and the Transformation of Care
This article responds to calls for new approaches to understanding and intervening in health inequalities and, in particular, for attention to the processes and relations that mediate structural inequality and everyday outcomes. Our contribution focuses on the part that healthcare organizations play in this. We draw on organizational sociology, which theorizes that while organizational structures, cultures, and practices may appear neutral - and …
Understanding the production and circulation of social media data
Social media data have provoked a mixed response from researchers. While there is great enthusiasm for this new source of social data – Twitter data in particular – concerns are also expressed about their biases and unknown provenance and, consequently, their credibility for social research. This article seeks a middle path, arguing that we must develop better understanding of the construction and circulation of social media data to evaluate thei…
No place for old women
Western countries currently face pressing demands to transform the labour market participation of older workers, in order to address the pressing economic and social challenges of an ageing population. However, in this article we argue that our understanding of older workers is limited by a dominant discourse that emphasises individuals rather than organisations; and valorises youth as the performative aspiration for all workers, regardless of ag…
Speaking Sociologically with Big Data
Recent years have seen persistent tension between proponents of big data analytics, using new forms of digital data to make computational and statistical claims about 'the social', and many sociologists sceptical about the value of big data, its associated methods and claims to knowledge. We seek to move beyond this, taking inspiration from a mode of argumentation pursued by Piketty, Putnam and Wilkinson and Pickett that we label 'symphonic socia…
Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing” describes the diverse practices of online‐distributed knowledge production whereby the Web is used to host collaborative platforms that focus large volumes of information, from multiple users, toward specific tasks. Sometimes described as the “wisdom of the crowd” or “collective intelligence,” crowdsourcing was originally conceived as a model for business innovation. It has now been taken up by a range of organizations and users – …
The New Degree?' Constructing Internships in the Third Sector
The recent economic recession has impacted substantially on the graduate labour market, with many graduates now struggling to find secure employment in professional careers. In this context, temporary, unpaid 'internships' have emerged as increasingly important as a 'way in' to work for this group. Yet while there has been much media and policy debate on internships, academic consideration has been scant. This article begins to address this knowl…
Technical Change and the Un/Troubling of Gendered Ageing in Healthcare Work
Whilst recent years have seen increasing pressure to extend the participation of older people in the labour market, it is clear that there remain significant challenges in achieving this and that these take specifically gendered forms. This paper explores if and how these might be shaped in intra‐action with the rapid pace of technological change linked to the pervasive spread of digital technologies in the workplace. We take our theoretical lead…
Geographies of labour in the third sector
This article aims to explore the geographies of labour in the third sector as these are constituted at the intersection of the multiple social, economic and cultural processes that intersect in place. Whilst previous research has examined either geographies of voluntarism or spatial divisions of paid labour in the sector, we draw on 'the new sociology of work' to offer a framework that recognises the interdependencies of paid and unpaid work in t…
Conceptualising the web for post-conflict governance building
Interest in using the web in the broad field of peacebuilding is growing, notably among practitioners and policymakers. The premise for such an interest often rests on assumptions that have not yet received rigorous critical examination. By problematising the relationship between the social and the technological, this paper proposes a socio-technical approach to understanding the uses of the web in post-conflict settings. More specifically this p…
Trusting technical change in call centres
Technical change is an on-going organizational challenge in call centres. While new technologies continually promise enhanced performance, not least by extending managerial control, the implementation of these technologies is an emergent process that requires effort by workers to establish new routines that embed innovations into everyday work. This article considers the role that trust may play in this process. Drawing on a theoretical framework…
Big Data
The emergence of Big Data is both promising and challenging for social research. This article suggests that realising this promise has been restricted by the methods applied in social science research, which undermine our potential to apprehend the qualities that make Big Data so appealing, not least in relation to the sociology of networks and flows. With specific reference to the micro-blogging website Twitter, the article outlines a set of met…
Digital Futures? Sociological Challenges and Opportunities in the Emergent Semantic Web
In the context of recent debates about the 'data deluge' and the future of empirical sociology, this article turns attention to current activities aimed at achieving far-reaching transformations to the World Wide Web. The emergent 'Semantic Web' has received little attention in sociology, despite its potentially profound consequences for data. In response to more general recent calls for a critical politics of data we focus our enquiry as follows…
Getting the Whole Picture
Considerable effort has been invested in telemedicine and e-health, but relatively few applications have endured beyond the research and development phase. Research within different academic disciplines points to the significance of established working and organizational relations within healthcare in shaping the outcome of particular projects, whether successful or otherwise. Even so, the findings appear as disparate and discrete observations wh…
Reconceptualizing Digital Social Inequality
This paper discusses conceptual tools which might allow an elaborated sociological analysis of the relationship between information and communication technology on the one hand, and social inequalities on the other. The authors seek to go beyond the familiar idea of the ‘digital divide’ to develop a focus on digital social inequality, through discussing three bodies of literature which are normally not discussed together. The paper thus addresses…
Un/doing Gender with ICT
What might new information and communication technologies (ICTs) at work do for gender? This question is explored here through an empirical study that traces the introduction of one ICT application—an electronic patient record (EPR)—into nursing and medical work in a University hospital in Norway. Health care work is well documented as a highly gendered field, where normalizing gender practices have dominated. The aim of this article is to explor…
Changing the record
Electronic patient record systems promise to optimise the delivery of health care. However, changing the record can disrupt established health-care work and organisation, producing less than optimum outcomes. Changing the record may not only change what health-care professionals do but may also change their understandings of work and self
Beyond implementation and resistance
New information and communication technologies (ICTs) offer great promise for the organisation of healthcare. Despite difficulties in implementation, commitment to the use of ICT in healthcare policy remains strong. Using examples from Norway, this article argues that this has set in motion changes beyond concerns about implementation and resistance, tied to an emergent mode of policy delivery dependent on private sector contractors and ICT exper…
In Search of the Sociology of Work
This paper traces relations between the study of work and the evolution of British sociology as an academic discipline. This reveals broad trajectories of marginalization, as the study of work becomes less central to Sociology as a discipline; increasing fragmentation of divergent approaches to the study of work; and - as a consequence of both - a narrowing of the sociological vision for the study of work. Our paper calls for constructive dialogu…
Placing Globalizing Technologies
The development and proliferation of new information and communication technologies has generated some profound claims about the erasure of place. Whilst these claims have continued political and policy resonance, they are increasingly challenged in sociological debate, which emphasizes the persistence of the local. Following this lead, our article explores relations between technology and place. We develop our understanding through engagement wi…
Sociologies of Space, Work and Organisation
Work organisations are made by the arrangement of space and working lives are made and lived through these spaces. Yet, explicit interest in space has been marginal to the development of sociologies of work organisation. Despite this, spatial analysis has often offered support to established theories of work and organisation. This paper reviews this contribution, excavating the spatial from past studies intended to address the labour process; sem…
Regulation Theory, the Local State, and the Transition of Urban Politics
An effort is made in this paper to contribute to recent debates, inspired by the regulationist literature, on the restructuring of capitalist society. A major weakness in this literature concerns the treatment of the state, and especially the local state. Despite the fact that the state is clearly identified as a key component of any mode of regulation, the actual processes through which economic and social forces are translated into state activi…
Restructuring Organisations, Changing People
This paper contributes to debates about the changing nature of gender relations in employment by re-framing existing debates about economic restructuring and organisational theory. It draws upon research on current changes in British banking and local government to show how restructuring is concerned with changing the qualities of organisational members, and we demonstrate how this recognition offers a corrective to existing views of restructurin…
Big Data
The emergence of Big Data is both promising and challenging for social research. This article suggests that realising this promise has been restricted by the methods applied in social science research, which undermine our potential to apprehend the qualities that make Big Data so appealing, not least in relation to the sociology of networks and flows. With specific reference to the micro-blogging website Twitter, the article outlines a set of met…
Speaking Sociologically with Big Data
Recent years have seen persistent tension between proponents of big data analytics, using new forms of digital data to make computational and statistical claims about 'the social', and many sociologists sceptical about the value of big data, its associated methods and claims to knowledge. We seek to move beyond this, taking inspiration from a mode of argumentation pursued by Piketty, Putnam and Wilkinson and Pickett that we label 'symphonic socia…
Digital Futures? Sociological Challenges and Opportunities in the Emergent Semantic Web
In the context of recent debates about the 'data deluge' and the future of empirical sociology, this article turns attention to current activities aimed at achieving far-reaching transformations to the World Wide Web. The emergent 'Semantic Web' has received little attention in sociology, despite its potentially profound consequences for data. In response to more general recent calls for a critical politics of data we focus our enquiry as follows…
Collapsing the Boundaries? Fatherhood, Organization and Home-Working
In the modern western world, the discursive construction of fatherhood and everyday fathering practices has been underpinned by the spatial separation of work from home, of public from private. However, increasing numbers of employees are now working from home and a disproportionate number of these are men with young children. This article draws on new empirical research to examine the implications for fathers and for organizations as home-workin…
The New Degree?' Constructing Internships in the Third Sector
The recent economic recession has impacted substantially on the graduate labour market, with many graduates now struggling to find secure employment in professional careers. In this context, temporary, unpaid 'internships' have emerged as increasingly important as a 'way in' to work for this group. Yet while there has been much media and policy debate on internships, academic consideration has been scant. This article begins to address this knowl…
What Future for the Sociology of Futures? Visions, Concepts and Methods
Questions about the future, and futurelessness, have attracted wide-ranging attention in recent years. Our article explores what Sociology offers. We reflect on the apparent contradiction that the future was bracketed off from the discipline in its early history, yet also offers rich theoretical, methodological and empirical resources for futures research. We demonstrate this through an analysis of the contributions to this Special Issue, each of…
Geographies of Opportunity
First, a regional analysis of the social mobilities of men and women nonmigrants is carried out. Second, the way in which regional context structures the options open to men and women is discussed, and, third, the fortunes of male and female interregional migrants are traced. The principal empirical results are: (1) that nonmigrant social mobilities have gender-specific spatial structures; (2) that this gender specificity is greater for upward th…
Towards a Sociology of Organizational Space
This paper aims to contribute to, and extend, the emergent Sociology of organizational space. It engages critically with labour process approaches, which position space within a control-resistance paradigm, suggesting that the conceptualization of space embedded within these accounts is limited and limiting. Drawing on insights from cultural geography the paper uses a new empirical study to show the ways that spatial meanings and spatial practice…
In Search of the Sociology of Work
This paper traces relations between the study of work and the evolution of British sociology as an academic discipline. This reveals broad trajectories of marginalization, as the study of work becomes less central to Sociology as a discipline; increasing fragmentation of divergent approaches to the study of work; and - as a consequence of both - a narrowing of the sociological vision for the study of work. Our paper calls for constructive dialogu…
Changing the record
Electronic patient record systems promise to optimise the delivery of health care. However, changing the record can disrupt established health-care work and organisation, producing less than optimum outcomes. Changing the record may not only change what health-care professionals do but may also change their understandings of work and self
Spatial divisions and women's initiatives in British local government
Sociologies of Space, Work and Organisation
Work organisations are made by the arrangement of space and working lives are made and lived through these spaces. Yet, explicit interest in space has been marginal to the development of sociologies of work organisation. Despite this, spatial analysis has often offered support to established theories of work and organisation. This paper reviews this contribution, excavating the spatial from past studies intended to address the labour process; sem…
Policy variations in local states
More than Words
[No abstract]
Gender and Organisational Restructuring in the National Health Service
Over the past decade, debates within economic geography and organizational sociology have shown that gender is embedded within economic discourses, organisational relations and processes of restructuring. The argument has been widely illustrated through reference to “identity”, with examples offered of the ways in which organizations and organisational change draw on specific performances of masculine and feminine identities. However, whilst we n…
Technical Change and the Un/Troubling of Gendered Ageing in Healthcare Work
Whilst recent years have seen increasing pressure to extend the participation of older people in the labour market, it is clear that there remain significant challenges in achieving this and that these take specifically gendered forms. This paper explores if and how these might be shaped in intra‐action with the rapid pace of technological change linked to the pervasive spread of digital technologies in the workplace. We take our theoretical lead…
Beyond implementation and resistance
New information and communication technologies (ICTs) offer great promise for the organisation of healthcare. Despite difficulties in implementation, commitment to the use of ICT in healthcare policy remains strong. Using examples from Norway, this article argues that this has set in motion changes beyond concerns about implementation and resistance, tied to an emergent mode of policy delivery dependent on private sector contractors and ICT exper…
Placing Globalizing Technologies
The development and proliferation of new information and communication technologies has generated some profound claims about the erasure of place. Whilst these claims have continued political and policy resonance, they are increasingly challenged in sociological debate, which emphasizes the persistence of the local. Following this lead, our article explores relations between technology and place. We develop our understanding through engagement wi…
Trusting technical change in call centres
Technical change is an on-going organizational challenge in call centres. While new technologies continually promise enhanced performance, not least by extending managerial control, the implementation of these technologies is an emergent process that requires effort by workers to establish new routines that embed innovations into everyday work. This article considers the role that trust may play in this process. Drawing on a theoretical framework…
Understanding the production and circulation of social media data
Social media data have provoked a mixed response from researchers. While there is great enthusiasm for this new source of social data – Twitter data in particular – concerns are also expressed about their biases and unknown provenance and, consequently, their credibility for social research. This article seeks a middle path, arguing that we must develop better understanding of the construction and circulation of social media data to evaluate thei…
No place for old women
Western countries currently face pressing demands to transform the labour market participation of older workers, in order to address the pressing economic and social challenges of an ageing population. However, in this article we argue that our understanding of older workers is limited by a dominant discourse that emphasises individuals rather than organisations; and valorises youth as the performative aspiration for all workers, regardless of ag…
Geographies of labour in the third sector
This article aims to explore the geographies of labour in the third sector as these are constituted at the intersection of the multiple social, economic and cultural processes that intersect in place. Whilst previous research has examined either geographies of voluntarism or spatial divisions of paid labour in the sector, we draw on 'the new sociology of work' to offer a framework that recognises the interdependencies of paid and unpaid work in t…
Un/doing Gender with ICT
What might new information and communication technologies (ICTs) at work do for gender? This question is explored here through an empirical study that traces the introduction of one ICT application—an electronic patient record (EPR)—into nursing and medical work in a University hospital in Norway. Health care work is well documented as a highly gendered field, where normalizing gender practices have dominated. The aim of this article is to explor…
Women’s Initiatives in Local Government … where do they come from and where are they going
This paper explores some of the practical and political implications of local government women’s initiatives. Two themes are discussed using survey and case-study material from a variety of local authorities. First, why do some local authorities choose to develop positive policies for women? Second, what status do these initiatives have and how politically/socially influential are they? The paper suggests that local government policy making can o…
Policy variations in local states
Spatial divisions and women's initiatives in British local government
Feminist Change in a Patriarchal Organisation
Over the last decade the issue of equal opportunities for women has been placed on the agenda of an ever increasing number of British local authorities. More than half of all authorities have now devised policies which fall within the broad field of equal opportunities, whilst a smaller proportion of these have chosen to set up specific structures such as Women's Committees and Equal Opportunities Communities to address equalities issues on a gen…
Regulation Theory, the Local State, and the Transition of Urban Politics
An effort is made in this paper to contribute to recent debates, inspired by the regulationist literature, on the restructuring of capitalist society. A major weakness in this literature concerns the treatment of the state, and especially the local state. Despite the fact that the state is clearly identified as a key component of any mode of regulation, the actual processes through which economic and social forces are translated into state activi…
Geographies of Opportunity
First, a regional analysis of the social mobilities of men and women nonmigrants is carried out. Second, the way in which regional context structures the options open to men and women is discussed, and, third, the fortunes of male and female interregional migrants are traced. The principal empirical results are: (1) that nonmigrant social mobilities have gender-specific spatial structures; (2) that this gender specificity is greater for upward th…
Restructuring Organisations, Changing People
This paper contributes to debates about the changing nature of gender relations in employment by re-framing existing debates about economic restructuring and organisational theory. It draws upon research on current changes in British banking and local government to show how restructuring is concerned with changing the qualities of organisational members, and we demonstrate how this recognition offers a corrective to existing views of restructurin…
Gender, Careers and Organisations
Is the position of women in the workplace changing? In addressing the broad range of issues raised by this question, Gender, Careers and Organisations engages in diverse contemporary debates about eco
Gender, Power and Organisations
This important text offers an overview and synthesis of theory and research into the gendered dimension of organisations, exploring how gender difference is constructed within organisations and intertwined with organisational power relations. Assuming little prior knowledge on the part of the reader, it examines a series of key areas of substantive interest in the study of organisations, bringing to bear a wide range of social and feminist theory…
Gender, Power, and Organisations
Gender and Organisation: Introducing Power Organisational Structures Organisational Cultures Gender and Management in Organisations Sexuality and Organisation Challenging Gendered Organisation Power, Gender and Organisation
Gender and Organisational Restructuring in the National Health Service
Over the past decade, debates within economic geography and organizational sociology have shown that gender is embedded within economic discourses, organisational relations and processes of restructuring. The argument has been widely illustrated through reference to “identity”, with examples offered of the ways in which organizations and organisational change draw on specific performances of masculine and feminine identities. However, whilst we n…
Towards a Sociology of Organizational Space
This paper aims to contribute to, and extend, the emergent Sociology of organizational space. It engages critically with labour process approaches, which position space within a control-resistance paradigm, suggesting that the conceptualization of space embedded within these accounts is limited and limiting. Drawing on insights from cultural geography the paper uses a new empirical study to show the ways that spatial meanings and spatial practice…
More than Words
[No abstract]
Place, Space and Time
This paper explores the relations between management discourse and employee subjectivity in the process of organizational change, drawing on a new empirical study of doctors and nurses working in the British National Health Service (NHS). It builds on recent critiques of more muscular accounts of discourse to examine the manoeuvres made by working subjects in response to managerialist discourses of the entrepreneurial self. While others have show…
Collapsing the Boundaries? Fatherhood, Organization and Home-Working
In the modern western world, the discursive construction of fatherhood and everyday fathering practices has been underpinned by the spatial separation of work from home, of public from private. However, increasing numbers of employees are now working from home and a disproportionate number of these are men with young children. This article draws on new empirical research to examine the implications for fathers and for organizations as home-workin…
Changement organisationnel et stratégies identitaires
La sociologie des organisations s'est intéressée, ces dernières années, à la relation entre le genre et les organisations de travail en particulier dans le cadre de recherches sur le changement organisationnel. L'« identité » s'impose comme une notion centrale dans ces travaux, au moment où les organisations exigent de la main-d'œuvre de nouvelles « performances » liées aux constructions discursives de la masculinité et de la féminité. Cet articl…
Sociologies of Space, Work and Organisation
Work organisations are made by the arrangement of space and working lives are made and lived through these spaces. Yet, explicit interest in space has been marginal to the development of sociologies of work organisation. Despite this, spatial analysis has often offered support to established theories of work and organisation. This paper reviews this contribution, excavating the spatial from past studies intended to address the labour process; sem…
Beyond implementation and resistance
New information and communication technologies (ICTs) offer great promise for the organisation of healthcare. Despite difficulties in implementation, commitment to the use of ICT in healthcare policy remains strong. Using examples from Norway, this article argues that this has set in motion changes beyond concerns about implementation and resistance, tied to an emergent mode of policy delivery dependent on private sector contractors and ICT exper…
In Search of the Sociology of Work
This paper traces relations between the study of work and the evolution of British sociology as an academic discipline. This reveals broad trajectories of marginalization, as the study of work becomes less central to Sociology as a discipline; increasing fragmentation of divergent approaches to the study of work; and - as a consequence of both - a narrowing of the sociological vision for the study of work. Our paper calls for constructive dialogu…
Placing Globalizing Technologies
The development and proliferation of new information and communication technologies has generated some profound claims about the erasure of place. Whilst these claims have continued political and policy resonance, they are increasingly challenged in sociological debate, which emphasizes the persistence of the local. Following this lead, our article explores relations between technology and place. We develop our understanding through engagement wi…
Getting the Whole Picture
Considerable effort has been invested in telemedicine and e-health, but relatively few applications have endured beyond the research and development phase. Research within different academic disciplines points to the significance of established working and organizational relations within healthcare in shaping the outcome of particular projects, whether successful or otherwise. Even so, the findings appear as disparate and discrete observations wh…
Reconceptualizing Digital Social Inequality
This paper discusses conceptual tools which might allow an elaborated sociological analysis of the relationship between information and communication technology on the one hand, and social inequalities on the other. The authors seek to go beyond the familiar idea of the ‘digital divide’ to develop a focus on digital social inequality, through discussing three bodies of literature which are normally not discussed together. The paper thus addresses…
Un/doing Gender with ICT
What might new information and communication technologies (ICTs) at work do for gender? This question is explored here through an empirical study that traces the introduction of one ICT application—an electronic patient record (EPR)—into nursing and medical work in a University hospital in Norway. Health care work is well documented as a highly gendered field, where normalizing gender practices have dominated. The aim of this article is to explor…
Changing the record
Electronic patient record systems promise to optimise the delivery of health care. However, changing the record can disrupt established health-care work and organisation, producing less than optimum outcomes. Changing the record may not only change what health-care professionals do but may also change their understandings of work and self
Digital Futures? Sociological Challenges and Opportunities in the Emergent Semantic Web
In the context of recent debates about the 'data deluge' and the future of empirical sociology, this article turns attention to current activities aimed at achieving far-reaching transformations to the World Wide Web. The emergent 'Semantic Web' has received little attention in sociology, despite its potentially profound consequences for data. In response to more general recent calls for a critical politics of data we focus our enquiry as follows…
Sociology (34 obras) · Political science (27 obras) · Computer Science (17 obras) · Epistemology (15 obras) · Social science (15 obras) · Economics (12 obras) · Gender Studies (12 obras) · Law (12 obras) · Public relations (12 obras) · Politics (11 obras)